Friday, February 2, 2018

“To Be Brave” by Bryde – A Song Review

“To Be Brave” was intriguing before hearing a note. The alert to the release of the song of Bryde came from the good people at Super Cat PR (thanks Kim). We went to the Souncloud site, moved our cursor to the “play” arrow, and immediately noticed the shape of the song’s waveform. The amplitude of the waveform increases more than once and never surrenders a gain. At the end of the waveform, the time stamp tells us that the song length is 4:13. A more than four-minute long crescendo?

With the cursor still hovering over the “play” arrow, it was time to commit. Is this going to lead to disappointment? We made the commitment and rather than falling short, “To Be Brave” exceeded expectations. The build is executed in three dimension – instrumentally, vocally, and lyrically. Clean sounding, gently played guitar provides the support at the start, with instruments being added as the track’s intensity increases. Similarly, the vocals shift from a calm descriptive tone to a forceful, more demanding delivery and then to melodic speak. Lyrically, Bryde explains,

“’To Be Brave’ was written as kind of a soft squeeze of the hand to many friends who have, like me, been through many a dark period and put on a brave face and just got on with it. It’s a comment about how we all live out certain episodes of our lives in such a public setting these days that I feel we almost edit them to appear flawless, nothing but smiles.”

Quoting the bio from Bryde's Facebook page, "Pembrokeshire-born, London-based Bryde (aka Sarah Howells) is a girl and an electric guitar playing fierce and fragile songs. Swaying from vulnerable to uncompromising within one verse and chorus, Bryde's music is honest and furiously authentic." The page identifies the band members as Jay Chakravorty and John Harris, in addition to Sarah Howells.